{"id":1963,"date":"2007-10-14T15:40:00","date_gmt":"2007-10-14T15:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2007\/10\/oh-well-then-nevermind.html"},"modified":"2007-10-14T15:40:00","modified_gmt":"2007-10-14T15:40:00","slug":"oh-well-then-nevermind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/10\/oh-well-then-nevermind.html","title":{"rendered":"Oh. Well, then, nevermind."},"content":{"rendered":"

Boy, you take a couple of days off<\/a>, and the world goes just a little bit nuts. <\/p>\n

I returned from my diaconate retreat Sunday afternoon to find that the Catholic world had its knickers in a knot<\/a> over an Italian priest who, according to television reports, was caught making sexual overtures toward a young man. <\/p>\n

Now, it turns out, it was all a terrible misunderstanding<\/a>: <\/p>\n

A Vatican official suspended after being caught on hidden camera making advances to a young man says he is not gay and was only pretending to be gay as part of his work.<\/p>\n

<\/a>In an interview published Sunday, Monsignor Tommaso Stenico told La Repubblica daily he frequented online gay chat rooms and met with gay men as part of his work as a psychoanalyst. He said that he pretended to be gay in order to gather information about “those who damage the image of the Church with homosexual activity.”<\/p>\n

Vatican teaching holds that gays and lesbians should be treated with compassion and dignity but that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered.”<\/p>\n

The Vatican said Saturday it was suspending Stenico after he was secretly filmed making advances to a young man and asserting that gay sex was not sinful during a television program on gay priests broadcast Oct. 1 on La7, a private Italian television network.<\/p>\n

While Stenico’s face was blurred in the footage, church officials recognized his Vatican office in the background and suspended him pending a church investigation.<\/p>\n

There have long been allegations that there are gays in the Roman Catholic priesthood, but the Stenico case is unusual because he is a relatively high-ranking Vatican official. He heads an office in the Vatican’s Congregation for Clergy \u2014 the main office overseeing all the world’s priests.<\/p>\n

The case comes at a particularly sensitive time, just two years after the Vatican issued tough new guidelines effectively barring gays from the priesthood \u2014 seen in large part as a response to complaints about a “gay subculture” in U.S. seminaries.<\/p>\n

The guidelines say the church cannot admit men to the priesthood who practice homosexuality, or have “deeply rooted homosexual tendencies or support so-called gay culture.” However, the document said that if the gay tendencies were just a “transitory problem,” the men can be ordained deacons if they successfully overcome those tendencies for three years.<\/p>\n

In the Repubblica interview, Stenico said he had never been gay and was heterosexual, but remained faithful to his vow of celibacy. He said he expected to be fully exonerated after a review.<\/p>\n

“It’s all false; it was a trap. I was a victim of my own attempts to contribute to cleaning up the church with my psychoanalyst work,” La Repubblica quoted Stenico as saying. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Photo: This undated image released Saturday, Oct. 13, 2007 by Petrus http:\/\/www.papanews.it web site shows a prelate identified by the online paper as Mons. Tommaso Stenico. From the AP <\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Boy, you take a couple of days off, and the world goes just a little bit nuts. I returned from my diaconate retreat Sunday afternoon to find that the Catholic world had its knickers in a knot over an Italian priest who, according to television reports, was caught making sexual overtures toward a young man.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":365,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ripped-from-the-headlines"],"yoast_head":"\nOh. Well, then, nevermind. - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/10\/oh-well-then-nevermind.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Oh. Well, then, nevermind. - The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Boy, you take a couple of days off, and the world goes just a little bit nuts. I returned from my diaconate retreat Sunday afternoon to find that the Catholic world had its knickers in a knot over an Italian priest who, according to television reports, was caught making sexual overtures toward a young man.…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/10\/oh-well-then-nevermind.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-10-14T15:40:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_0DySLTT4PWo\/RxJyjrdyjhI\/AAAAAAAABLM\/8Ze5_gBj_ss\/s320\/ALeqM5jvk4Z4dPDwf5y4dS6EdJ6ZAFf-Nw\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"deacon greg kandra\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Oh. Well, then, nevermind. - The Deacon's Bench","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/10\/oh-well-then-nevermind.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Oh. Well, then, nevermind. - The Deacon's Bench","og_description":"Boy, you take a couple of days off, and the world goes just a little bit nuts. I returned from my diaconate retreat Sunday afternoon to find that the Catholic world had its knickers in a knot over an Italian priest who, according to television reports, was caught making sexual overtures toward a young man.…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/10\/oh-well-then-nevermind.html","og_site_name":"The Deacon's Bench","article_published_time":"2007-10-14T15:40:00+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_0DySLTT4PWo\/RxJyjrdyjhI\/AAAAAAAABLM\/8Ze5_gBj_ss\/s320\/ALeqM5jvk4Z4dPDwf5y4dS6EdJ6ZAFf-Nw"}],"author":"deacon greg kandra","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/10\/oh-well-then-nevermind.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/10\/oh-well-then-nevermind.html","name":"Oh. Well, then, nevermind. - The Deacon's Bench","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/10\/oh-well-then-nevermind.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/10\/oh-well-then-nevermind.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_0DySLTT4PWo\/RxJyjrdyjhI\/AAAAAAAABLM\/8Ze5_gBj_ss\/s320\/ALeqM5jvk4Z4dPDwf5y4dS6EdJ6ZAFf-Nw","datePublished":"2007-10-14T15:40:00+00:00","dateModified":"2007-10-14T15:40:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#\/schema\/person\/052b8cd86cc713feaccdc8282b03cf10"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/10\/oh-well-then-nevermind.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/10\/oh-well-then-nevermind.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/10\/oh-well-then-nevermind.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_0DySLTT4PWo\/RxJyjrdyjhI\/AAAAAAAABLM\/8Ze5_gBj_ss\/s320\/ALeqM5jvk4Z4dPDwf5y4dS6EdJ6ZAFf-Nw","contentUrl":"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_0DySLTT4PWo\/RxJyjrdyjhI\/AAAAAAAABLM\/8Ze5_gBj_ss\/s320\/ALeqM5jvk4Z4dPDwf5y4dS6EdJ6ZAFf-Nw"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/10\/oh-well-then-nevermind.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Oh. Well, then, nevermind."}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/","name":"The Deacon's Bench","description":"Where a Roman Catholic Deacon Ponders the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#\/schema\/person\/052b8cd86cc713feaccdc8282b03cf10","name":"deacon greg kandra","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/a4e\/a4e07ce6fde3f10d4d9753243fd48d45x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/a4e\/a4e07ce6fde3f10d4d9753243fd48d45x96.jpg","caption":"deacon greg kandra"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/author\/deacon-greg-kandra"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/365"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1963\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}